Chase Brown is no stranger to severe weather and the impact it can have on a golf course.
Chase Brown
The golf course superintendent at Capital City Country Club in Tallahassee, Fla., is a native of the city and has spent much of his career in golf course management at facilities in Florida.
“I’ve been through hurricanes before, but those basically missed us,” Brown says. “We’ve lost trees, had branches, leaves and other debris that had to be cleaned up. No fun, but nothing that kept us closed for very long. This wasn’t that, though. This was something else entirely.”
The “this” Brown is referring to is a series of tornadoes that tore through Tallahassee on May 10, killing two people and causing an estimated $50 million in damage, a figure that is expected to rise. Capital City CC was the epicenter for much of that damage, with two of the confirmed five tornadoes spawned by the storm system converging on the golf course, bringing down thousands of trees and damaging nearly every structure on the property.
Some of the damage to Capital City CC in Tallahassee, Fla., after a pair of EF2 tornadoes ripped through the golf course on May 10, causing significant structural damage and uprooting or damaging thousands of trees. (Photo: Chase Brown)
As of the first of June, the club had yet to reopen for play.
“It was an all-timer, it really was,” Brown says. “The National Weather Service guys who were here said one of the tornadoes was 1,400 yards wide and the other was 900 yards wide. That’s pretty much the footprint of our property, wall to wall, so everything was affected.”
In the weeks leading up to the storm, Brown says the course was rounding into peak condition, the results of long-term course improvement efforts and more short-term work to prepare the facility for a busy slate of upcoming tournaments. In fact, on the day of the storm, the club was set to host a tournament that’s a local favorite among the green industry set, sponsored by, ironically enough, Miller’s Tree Service, with a host of local superintendents taking part.
In addition to the thousands of trees that were lost to the tornadoes’ wrath, many others had their tops sheared off as the twisters rose and fell while making their way through the course. (Photo: Chase Brown)
And while light rain was falling as Brown drove to the club that morning, there were few signs that anything more sinister was ahead.
“We had crews on the course finishing up our prep, and I was getting ready to pull onto a side road that leads to the course,” Brown says. “It was raining just enough to get the windshield wet, and radar wasn’t showing what was coming yet because I was watching.”
Just a few minutes later, that changed.
“All of a sudden, we get a torrential downpour,” he says. “And as I’m sending out a mass text for everyone to get off the golf course, the tornado sirens went off. It happened so stinking fast. Everything unraveled in just a minute or two.”
As the pair of EF2-rated tornadoes with estimated peak winds of 115 mph began to roar through the property, crew members and golfers alike found themselves scrambling for safety. Some of Brown’s crew made it to the clubhouse. Others made it back to the maintenance facility, with some riding it out in parked vehicles and others taking shelter in a bathroom. A single crew member was stranded on the far side of the course and dove into the only cover he could find in time — an open-sided rain shelter. Miraculously, none of the crew were injured.
As for Brown, he quickly pulled off the road and parked along the side of an oil change shop for protection. While he too came out unscathed, his truck was another matter; most of his crew’s vehicles suffered some kind of damage, and a fundraising effort to help defer some of those repair costs is underway.
Once the storms had passed and club officials were able to assess the overall scope of the damage, the arduous task of cleaning up Capital City CC began. Clearing greens was job one, and that was finished in just a day or two.
Photo: Chase Brown
“My assistant, my mechanic and I did most of that ourselves,” Brown says. “The crew had been through a lot, obviously, so we gave them a few days off. They’re back now and have really gone above and beyond for us.”
The rest of the playable areas — mainly tees and fairways — were next, and as of late May, Brown says those areas were in decent shape, aided by plant growth regulator treatments that they made throughout the spring. He’s also had access to water, even though the pump house lost its roof and most of the satellite irrigation boxes on the property were damaged.
Removing downed trees and ensuring the ones that remained are safe has been an arduous task for the crew at Capital City CC. “You get one set of busted trees cleaned up,” says superintendent Chase Brown, “and there is another set right behind it.” (Photo: Chase Brown)
“Down the middle, we look pretty good,” Brown says. “If you hit ‘em straight, you could play right now.”
It’s the edges of the once tree-lined property where the going has been slower.
“The sheer quantity of trees that were mangled or have sketchy, dangerous limbs is just through the roof,” Brown says. “You get one set of busted trees cleaned up and there is another set right behind it. It’s a very slow process.”
And even though it could be several more months before most signs of the tornadoes’ wrath are no longer visible, Brown and his team are committed to seeing it out.
“This is where I was born and raised, and I take a lot of pride in this place,” Brown says. “It’s a reflection on me and everybody on my team, so we’ll do what we need to. This is a really good golf course, an institution in the community (Capital City CC opened in 1908). We’ll get it back to what it was before the storms, I guarantee it.”
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